Barrier Reef oil spill April 4, 2010

You're a miserable waste of text spendi. You're making this personal is so petty it's ridiculous. Are you really this lonely that the only way you can get attention is by being an insufferable asshole? This is a terrible accident to happen, and it could have been avoided in my opinion.

Why don't you free up the barstool so the bartender can talk to a new patron who is actually interesting (and willing to tip).

T
K
O

Well, as a seaman, I would hate it when nautical standards aren't fulfilled.

I could imagine that Australian skippers are glad to get some nautical help and advice elsewhere, too.

The problem is Spendy, no-one knows how to manage a negative spiral. If we allow economies to shrink, look what happened in the Great Depression and the Great Recession. It was only spending that got us out. If we cut back on fuel or even raise the cost what happens next ?

No-one knows how to cut back ...this is why cutting back for the Global Warming Myth may prove more disasterous than if we get warmer. Look around the average house and identify the things that are essential, now work out how many of the other ticky-tackies employ what percentage of the work force. We are driven inexorably to continue what we are doing now.

There is an economic model that says if a work force shrinks by about 20% the economy will collapse back to a point where it may never recover for a very long time. This was close to germany's loses in WWII but they had gold reserves to buy their way out and construction companies from the USA. An economy shrinking its work force by more than 20% now would do great damage. We have spent all our reserves to dig out of this recession and to prop up the banks.

One world disaster such as Naples or Los Angeles or Tokyo disappearing and we may find a new dark ages. Running out of a major resource may do the same thing. And still we sail on.....what choice do we have if know one knows how to reverse the ship ?

I dont have a problem with anything you have said so far Walter but the economics of it are such that making shipping too expensive such as charges for pilots hands contracts to Brazil and other competitors. Obviously an economical solution such as compulsory positioning reporting would be best as the companies would have to pay for it. It would also be better if companies had to register ships meeting ceratin safety standards rather than some of the hulks that are out there. But first, the fines need to be put simply as the cost of the clean up.

Your bombast is irrelevant TK. If ships are batting around the oceans delivering cheap fuel to meet demand there will inevitably be accidents each one allowing you to get on your rocking horse and bleat.

Every accident could be avoided but accidents can't be avoided. Are you waiting in ambush for when they happen so that you can jump up and deliver your predictable and pointless castigations of the authorities and demonstrate what a responsible and concerned citizen you are.

You haven't denied that you demand cheap fuel so you are a cause of the accidents. For you to jump on one when it happens is the lowest form of hypocrisy no matter which barstool I sit upon, however pissed I get, how much of an asshole I am or how lonely.

What's a ship doing carry coal to Australia. Have they no coal of their own or is it that miners are cheaper to hire elsewhere. Like in China were a load of miners have just been killed due the health and safety regulations not being as stringent as we are used to.

Go boil your head you phoney fatso.

I'm not suggesting any cutbacks. I'm suggesting that we take the accidents on the chin when they happen and that they are not subjected to patronising lectures from toss-pots like TKO telling us all what we all already know.

The prevention of all accidents would involve economies grinding to a halt. We should be grown up about these matters.

Getting cheap coal from China frees up resources which can be used to finance Australian cricket and that's the bugger I'm after. It's a bloody subsidy and anybody can look good on a subsidy.

The headline should read--BARGAIN HUNTERS CRASH ANOTHER GIANT SHIP.

they are working on this, but I don't know if the plan is to make using positioning transponders mandatory. I can't think of any good reasons why they are not doing this already.

If they are not mandatory one company will pass on them and its product will be a bit cheaper and everybody will buy it like the bookie who is first to go to 11 to 10 about the even money chance takes all the bets.

That was the motive for building giant carrying vessels in the first place.

Even it if is mandatory and reduces accidents it won't prevent them. Which is a plus of course.

Offering bargains has been illegal in earlier times. Pillory job.

I am pretty sure that the Australians have the right with-in international law to make it so. In fact I believe that right now it is mandatory for all cruise ships to use a pilot when they are in the reef zone.

People more precious that fuel!! Good grief. There's plenty more where they came from and that's not the case with coal and oil.

Only kidding hawk. I think.

The demand for cheap fuel is most definitely not the cause of the accident you idiot. The cause of the accident is reckless and negligent piloting.

If a school bus were to crash when the driver was sleeping, drunk or driving through red lights, it would be absurd to declare that the cause of the accident was the demand for an education. However, you are absurd, so perhaps it's to be expected.

You've mistaken your barstool for a lighthouse and your words as a flame. You offer nothing here.

T
K
O

actually spendi does offer something, his presence is a form of entertainment that all to many readers request encore performances.

Thank you dys. TKO is what Dylan called in Tombstone Blues a "sweet pretty thing".

It is a scientific fact that if there was no demand for education in a teacher's union prison camp there would be no bus, no driver, drunk or otherwise, and thus no accident.

Just so, if there was no demand for cheap fuel there would be no ships taking coal from China to Australia or from Australia to China, as there wasn't before the madness got underway, depending on which grade of coal was marginally discounted on the Singapore Stock Exchange, where Nick Leeson famously chased his ego, as an alternative to mixing plaster for his Dad, or burned slightly more or less efficiently in the furnace of choice, and there would be no giant tanker stuck on the reef at the mercy of the waves which, in the fullness of time, one supposes, given the nature of human inconsequenciality, will float the coal ashore and provide free fuel to the inhabitants of the coastal regions on which it will fetch up assuming the Australian government doesn't intervene. Like in Whisky Galore.

There's winners and losers whatever happens. Look at Iraq.

TKO is just another bargain hunter trying to pin the blame on a bunch of chaps who shift billions of tons of fuel around in order to get him cheap goods and with one accident every blue moon which demonstrates their skill and expertise to anybody without distorted vision.

are you certain that coal floats?

seems unlikely to me...

Get yourself a tutu TK.

It's less dense than the rocks the tides bring ashore. But the coal in this ship might be in powder form to make it easier to pump. Some grades of coal float.

Cheaper to unload I meant with pumps powered by the electricity it generates.

I get it now. You don't want to be taken seriously!

T
K
O

I hope they DO charge the bastard...